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Animated GIFs in emails

PostPosted:Tue Mar 01, 2016 12:50 am
by remnant
A new trend emerging among some email marketers is the use of animated GIFs in emails. These emails have a unique selling proposal in that they are not static and are more likely to prompt a customer to open an email. They can also be used to explain concepts in an easy to grasp manner through animated GIF tutorials.

Re: Animated GIFs in emails

PostPosted:Tue Mar 01, 2016 3:34 am
by djmail
Yes, I like the idea. I have been using funny animated gifs in blogs for a long time and I noticed that there was always more engagement with a live animation than with a regular article with a static image. Never tested emails like that.

Re: Animated GIFs in emails

PostPosted:Wed Mar 02, 2016 6:53 am
by Smackled
Animated gifs are kind of awesome, but unless they're really good, their novelty wears off pretty fast. I wouldn't overuse anything, originality tends to be worth its weight in gold.

Re: Animated GIFs in emails

PostPosted:Wed Mar 02, 2016 8:50 am
by djmail
Yeah, the best kind of animated gifs would be the ones you generate in-house.

Re: Animated GIFs in emails

PostPosted:Wed Mar 02, 2016 7:27 pm
by ctfranklin28
Animated gifs are kind of awesome, but unless they're really good, their novelty wears off pretty fast. I wouldn't overuse anything, originality tends to be worth its weight in gold.
I will have to agree with you, Smackled. Animated GIF's are a novelty, like everything else on the Internet and marketing. You have to use it at the right moment for the right purpose. Getting to that "sweet spot" takes experimentation, creativity, measurement, and listening.

Re: Animated GIFs in emails

PostPosted:Wed Mar 02, 2016 9:15 pm
by djmail
Yepp, a lot of experimentation, measurement and tweaking. But, I like the idea that was proposed in an article, where they embedded an animated gif in an email with a play button (sort of like on adult sites), so it would look like there was a preview of the video playing, and as soon as the user would click the gif or the play button on the gif, they would be taken to the actual landing page where the video would start playing automatically.

Re: Animated GIFs in emails

PostPosted:Wed Mar 02, 2016 9:27 pm
by VinayaSpeaks
I prefer clean emails with focus on content rather than images or animated gifs. Images can be raster as well as vector. For some people animated GIFs are more visually striking and they prefer emails with images and gif images.

Re: Animated GIFs in emails

PostPosted:Wed Mar 02, 2016 9:42 pm
by djmail
Yeah, I feel like if done right, a gif would look the email look even more professional.